What are you cooking on my pizza?

“Pizza-top cuisine” is becoming the leitmotif of contemporary pizza; a fundamental element that blurs the line between pizzeria and restaurant. Misunderstood at the beginning, seen as an outrage to tradition and a coercion, today it is a natural path for many pizza makers who are daringly exploring with toppings, after carrying out thousands of experiments with dough in the search for the crunchy effect with honeycomb edges -. Here we are not talking about more or less complex assemblages of great raw materials - an aspect that has characterised the so-called gourmet pizza for years - but the concept is precisely that of “cooking on the pizza and for the pizza”.

This is quite a serious activity, which implies profound knowledge and respect for the raw materials, the cooking techniques as well as the doughs themselves, which must be perfectly combined with what will be put on top. Moreover, ‘pizza-top cuisine’ also presupposes a great deal of creativity, a profound search not only for the ingredient, but also for flavour and balance. Having started out as an experimental form, it is now an expressive requirement, a virtuous intermingling with the world of cuisine toutcourt, along with ovens, which has had the power to banish ingredients of dubious origin. It was originally called gourmet pizza and the forerunner was Simone Padoan of ‘I Tigli’ who practically rewrote the very concept of pizza. The starting point was rethinking what was put on the pizza to give it greater value and a different flavour, changing the raw materials, choosing fresh and working it directly. Padoan blazed a trail and had many followers; since then, there have been numerous experiments, including extravaganzas and masterpieces.

Pizza gastronomy finds inspiration in typical local recipes, feeds on the imagination of those pizza chefs who are ‘a little bit chef a little bit master pizza maker’, becomes seasonal and sustainable, is attentive and does not waste. Vegetables are the absolute protagonists: stewed, creamed, roasted, burnt. And then there are powders, acidities, fish and meat, raw and the various types of cooking, from low temperatures to bbq. In short, when we talk about cooking, we are really talking about fire and techniques that transform materials, creating textures and composing new flavours.

TRADITIONAL CUISINE HAS NEVER BEEN SO FASHIONABLE.

TRADITIONAL CUISINE ON PIZZA

It is easy to think of carbonara, genovese or arrabbiata when talking about cooking on pizza. Here we go further: traditional cuisine has never been as fashionable on pizza as it is now. Do you want an example? Let us serve you with one: Padoan has the polenta and creamed cod pizza among his creations; a perfect example of what we are talking about.